Rubio is not flying to Rome on a goodwill tour.
“Endangering a Lot of Catholics” — Trump Smears …
As I detailed in yesterday’s piece, USA Today reports Cuba is near the top of the Secretary of State’s agenda, and the pattern is hard to miss. In January, a senior Pentagon official lectured Pope Leo’s Ambassador to the United States in a closed-door meeting that Vatican officials later described to me as a fishing expedition for preemptive blessing on American military action.
Four months later, the Cuban-American Secretary of State who built his Senate career on hawkish opposition to Havana is bringing the same ask through the Vatican's front door, with the island ninety miles from Florida on the table.
Today's smear runs the play yesterday’s piece predicted — preemptive neutralization of the pope before Rubio's Thursday ask.
The Trump administration appears to be looking for the Vatican’s blessing — or at least its silence — should Washington take military action against Cuba. The play is to cast Leo as reckless, tell American Catholics a fabricated story about Iran, nuclear weapons, and their own safety, and then dispatch the cabinet's most polished diplomat to extract a concession the pope will never give.
Trump attacca ancora papa Leone XIV, ma dal Vaticano arriva una risposta ferma, misurata e tutt’altro che arrendevole. A parlare è il cardinale Pietro Parolin, segretario di Stato della Santa Sede, che replica al nuovo affondo del presidente americano contro il Pontefice.
Trump, a due giorni dalla visita in Vaticano del segretario di Stato Usa Marco Rubio, ha accusato Leone XIV di «mettere in pericolo molti cattolici e molte persone». Una frase pesantissima, inserita nello scontro sempre più acceso tra la Casa Bianca e la Santa Sede sulla guerra, sull’Iran e sul ruolo del Papa come voce internazionale della pace.
Parolin risponde a Trump
«Il Papa va avanti per la sua strada, nel senso di predicare il Vangelo, di predicare la pace, come direbbe San Paolo, opportune et importune», ha detto Parolin a margine delle celebrazioni per i 70 anni di Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, l’ospedale di San Giovanni Rotondo.
Il messaggio è chiaro: Leone XIV non cambierà linea per gli attacchi di Trump. Continuerà a fare ciò che ritiene parte essenziale del suo ministero: richiamare alla pace, anche quando questo risulta scomodo ai potenti.
“Il Papa ha già risposto”
Parolin ha poi spiegato di non sapere se Leone XIV avrà occasione di replicare direttamente a questi nuovi attacchi.
«Il Papa ha già risposto, io non aggiungerei nulla», ha affermato il segretario di Stato.
Il riferimento è alle parole pronunciate dal Pontefice durante l’incontro con i giornalisti in aereo il 13 aprile, nel viaggio verso l’Africa. Secondo Parolin, quella fu «una risposta molto, molto cristiana», perché il Papa ribadì semplicemente il proprio compito: predicare la pace.
La linea della Santa Sede
«Che questo possa piacere o non possa piacere, è un discorso», ha aggiunto Parolin. «Capiamo che non tutti sono sulla stessa linea. Però quella è la risposta del Papa».
Una formula diplomatica, ma non debole. La Santa Sede non entra nel linguaggio dello scontro frontale, non replica colpo su colpo, non personalizza la polemica. Ma conferma che la linea non cambia.
La visita di Rubio in Vaticano
Il nuovo attacco di Trump arriva alla vigilia della visita di Marco Rubio in Vaticano, letta da molti come un tentativo di ricucire lo strappo tra Washington e la Santa Sede. Rubio, cattolico praticante (?), avrà il compito di riportare il confronto su un terreno più istituzionale, dopo giorni di tensione crescente.
Ma le parole del presidente americano rischiano di rendere il clima ancora più complicato. Da una parte la Casa Bianca, che pretende una linea più dura sull’Iran e sui conflitti internazionali. Dall’altra il Papa, che continua a parlare di pace anche quando la parola pace viene liquidata come debolezza.
Uno scontro destinato a pesare
La replica di Parolin non chiude il caso, ma fissa un confine. Leone XIV non intende trasformare il pontificato in una guerra verbale con Trump. Allo stesso tempo, però, non arretra.
Il Papa predica il Vangelo e la pace. Lo farà quando è opportuno e quando non lo è, quando viene applaudito e quando viene attaccato. È questa, in fondo, la vera risposta del Vaticano al presidente americano.
Letters from Leo — the American Pope & US …
The slur from Trump was the president’s latest contribution to the campaign.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, a second lie arrived — this one from a Catholic.
In an on-camera press briefing ahead of his Vatican meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked whether he agreed with the president’s claim that Pope Leo XIV “is endangering a lot of Catholics” by opposing the Iran war. Rubio — who attends Mass, calls himself a faithful Catholic, and serves a president who has now insulted his pope on camera — denied that Trump had ever said it.
“Well, I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what he said. I think what the president basically said is that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon because they would use it against places that have a lot of Catholics and Christians and others.”
That is not what Trump said. The president’s words from that morning are on tape, and anyone can pull up the full transcript.
Trump did not deliver a tidy abstraction about Iranian proliferation. He accused Leo XIV of endangering Catholics by opposing American violence. Rubio knew the quote. He chose to lie about it on camera, hours before walking into the Apostolic Palace.
This is the moral picture on the eve of the Secretary of State’s audience with Pope Leo XIV. A president attacked the pope and lied about what the pope said. His Catholic Secretary of State stacked a second lie on top of it, scrubbing on television words the country had heard with its own ears.
In between stood the Holy Father at Castel Gandolfo, refusing to descend into the spectacle and pointing instead to the only thing that mattered: the Gospel, the values of the Word of God, and the truth about the weapons we build to destroy God’s creation.
Pope Leo XIV’s witness on Tuesday was a refusal — to dignify the smear, to bargain over the Gospel, or to let an American administration bully the Bishop of Rome into softening a Church teaching that predates this White House by centuries.
The pope endangers no one. His call is to a country that has confused fear-mongering with statecraft and aerial bombing with peace.
Marco Rubio, by choosing the cover-up over the truth, has now made himself part of the problem he might otherwise have helped solve.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with Pope Leo XIV and the millions of American Catholics — and countless others of goodwill — who refuse to let politicians and their cabinet officers turn the Gospel into a partisan threat.
Our movement is built on the conviction that a Holy Father who answers insults with “peace be with you” deserves more than a White House willing to call his Gospel an endangerment and lie when its own words are quoted back to it.
In an era poisoned by cynicism and cruelty, we remain rooted in a faith that refuses to flinch before injustice or bow to the idols of fear and authoritarianism.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for something deeper than rage and propaganda.
They are looking for courage, for truth, for love made visible in action — and right now, with the Secretary of State of the United States lying on camera for a president who attacked the Bishop of Rome, that hunger has never been more urgent.
If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for the Gospel against a politics of lies — I am asking you to join us.
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Killed American Charlie Kirk who was on his way to becoming Catholic. Now Trump is planning a data center under the White House ballroom to track Americans. Don't pray out loud near your phone.